I love my Palm T3, and I love the simplicity, quickness and ease of use of the Palm OS. The amount of 3rd party software out there and what it all does (in terms of added functionality) is amazing. I'm really satisfied with all that I'm able to do with my Palm now; between bluetooth and the wi-fi card, battery sled and bluetooth keyboard, it meets all of my portable PDA/PC needs. Barring theft or serious damage to it, I'll be using that pretty much as long as it can last me.

But despite having a workable PDA in hand, the latest and greatest devices are always of interest to me...(since one day, when they're discounted, I might be in a position to get one...)

Pocket PC's (windows mobile products) are looking increasingly intriguing to me, not least because of the extra variety of "all-in-one" communicator packages offered.

Anyway - what prompted this post was a pronuncement of a similar nature by Eldar on Mobile-review.com in his forecast for PDA's and communicators for 2006.

I can see his point; many (myself included) have noted that Palm OS 5 is looking a little dated; if nothing else it's due for at least a facelift and an "under the hood" modification to allow for real multitasking.

Also, it seems like a lot of (good) Palm software has been discounted lately - has that all been Christmas specials or are developers trying to max out on what they can get for OS5 level apps?

What concerns me is that there's been very very little in the way of rumors or news concerning Palm on Linux as of late...that is (was?) supposed to be the next step in the evolution of Palm OS; is there in fact nothing happening there? All of Palm's news seems to be about its Windows Mobile products...

I'm a little bummed out that the most innovative part of Palm's product lineup for 2006 so far appears to be just its treo 700...

Is there anything going on in the Palm world that could be a source of hope for a Palm fan? (not to be overly melodramatic about it...). The fact that there are NO rumors or leaked photos of devices using Palm on Linux is a bit worrying.

I'm living in china at present, so perhaps my perspective is off a bit - Palm products are under-represented compared to in North America (probably in no small part due to their non-existant mainland China support...CKJOS is great for what it does, but I don't think that localization solution + Palm OS alone is enough to win over a significant percentage of smartphone users in China - Pocket PC phones, however, seem to have carved a niche for themselves)...

So - again - is there any "good" news out there concerning development for the next generation of Palm devices and the next phase in evolution of the Palm OS?